Club reservation availability ?

[GM600]

I'm thinking about buying a HGVC timeshare and I have some questions. I like to take a few vacations a year. Usually one 7 day trip and a few 2-3 day trips. I would like to have a 2 bedroom for most trips but might be able to use a 1 bedroom for another year or so, after that the kids will be too big for a pullout to be acceptable. The wife wants to go to Hawaii, but I don't see this being an annual trip there due to the airfare costs.

Is there truly enough availability for club reservations at different resorts? I don't want to go to the same place every year.

I'm guessing that I need at least 7,000 points for my one week trip. I was also considering getting another 4,800 point unit for the small trips. Am I better off trying to buy one larger unit so the MFs are lower? It doesn't seem like there are many of the larger point units available.

 

[Wgk101]

I have been a hgvc owner for 7 years and have used all of my 14000 points traveling and vacationing without once staying at my home resort. So yes there is availability but it takes planning and perseverance to make it work

It is always better to buy a larger point package to save on mf, but the higher packages may cost more upfront..figure about adollar a point but for 7000 platinum, but there can be batter buys with dilligence

 

[onenotesamba]

I've been a member for about six months, at this point. I purchased two 1BR Platinum contracts at low MF properties (Vegas and Orlando), so I've got 9600 points, every year. We also bought the VIP package when we went to our presentation in November, so we've got a few additional points to play around with. So, over the past six months or so, here's what we've booked:

1. Long weekend (Dr. King's Birthday Weekend) in Vegas in January using an open season (cash).

2. Long weekend in Orlando in January (connected with a business trip) using open season. We had to cancel this one because of a nor'easter that shut down travel on the east coast, but HGVC made an exception to the cancellation policy for us.

3. Family vacation in Myrtle Beach using points in June. A 1BR for myself and my husband. A 2BR for my sister, her partner, and my teenaged niece and a friend of hers. We're using nearly all of our points for one year for those two units, and we got them about 6 months before traveling, for a prime summer week.

4. A family vacation with my husband's family on the Big Island in August. We got a 2 BR using the VIP package that we had, and I'm pretty sure we had to compete with owners for availability. We booked it in December for this coming August. We were locked into a specific week, because our niece and nephew had sports and camp and other things, and while we couldn't get a 2 BR in Honolulu, we had no problem at Kingsland.

5. A long weekend in November (Veteran's Day Weekend) using points for a 2BR, for our wedding anniversary. When we get closer, we might think about canceling and trying to get an open season reservation, since those rooms are widely available in Vegas at pretty much any time. But we'll have a small number of points left over from the Myrtle Beach trip, so rather than paying to rescue 180 points, we might as well use them up.

6. A long ski weekend (well, for my husband, it'll be a ski weekend, for me, more likely a "falling down a lot" weekend--again, Dr. King's Birthday Weekend) next January in Park City. We booked shortly after the 9 month window, and found a studio that was available.

So, we've been able to get into a pretty wide range of places using our points, booking either within the 30 day open season window, or within the 9 month club window.

 

[itradehilton]

If your 2-3 day trips are over the weekends then you will need more points. We have been members for 10 years and can get around 20 nights a year from our 14,000 points by using RCI exchanges and taking shorter trips on weekdays. We own in Vegas and have been able to use the club time to get into everywhere HGVC has resorts in North America except South Carolina because we haven't tried yet.